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THE NINTH DAY.
A LITTLE change in the weather. The rain still continues, but the
wind is not quite so high. Have I any reason to believe, because
it is calmer on land, that it is also calmer at sea? Perhaps not.
But my mind is scarcely so uneasy to-day, nevertheless.
I had looked over the newspaper with the usual result, and had
laid it down with the customary sense of disappointment, when
Jessie handed me a letter which she had received that morning. It
was written by her aunt, and it upbraided her in the highly
exaggerated terms which ladies love to employ, where any tender
interests of their own are concerned, for her long silence and
her long absence from home. Home! I thought of my poor boy and of
the one hope on which all his happiness rested, and I felt
jealous of the word when I saw it used persuasively in a letter
to our guest. What right had any one to mention "home" to her
until George had spoken first?
"I must answer it by return of post," said Jessie, with a tone of
sorrow in her voice for which my heart warmed to her. "You have
been very kind to me; you have taken more pains to interest and
amuse me than I am worth. I can laugh about most things, but I
can't laugh about going away. I am honestly and sincerely too
grateful for that."
She paused, came round to where I was sitting, perched herself on
the end of the table, and, resting her hands on my shoulders,
added gently:
"It must be the day after to-morrow, must it not?"
I could not trust myself to answer. If I had spoken, I should
have betrayed George's secret in spite of myself.
"To-morrow is the tenth day," she went on, softly. "It looks so
selfish and so ungrateful to go the moment I have heard the last
of the stories, that I am quite distressed at being obliged to
enter on the subject at all. And yet, what choice is left me?
what can I do when my aunt writes to me in that way?"
She took up the letter again, and looked at it so ruefully that I
drew her head a little nearer to me, and gratefully kissed the
smooth white forehead.
"If your aunt is only half as anxious to see you again, my love,
as I am to see my son, I must forgive her for taking you away
from us." The words came from me without premeditation. It was
not calculation this time, but sheer instinct that impelled me to
test her in this way, once more, by a direct reference to George.
She was so close to me that I felt her breath quiver on my cheek.
Her eyes had been fixed on my face a moment before, but they now
wandered away from it constrainedly. One of her hands trembled a
little on my shoulder, and she took it off.
"Thank you for trying to make our parting easier to me," she
said, quickly, and in a lower tone than she had spoken in yet. I
made no answer, but still looked her anxiously in the face. For a
few seconds her nimble delicate fingers nervously folded and
refolded the letter from her aunt, then she abruptly changed her
position.
"The sooner I write, the sooner it will be over," she said, and
hurriedly turned away to the paper-case on the side-table.
How was the change in her manner to be rightly interpreted? Was
she hurt by what I had said, or was she secretly so much affected
by it, in the impressionable state of her mind at that moment, as
to be incapable of exerting a young girl's customary
self-control? Her looks, actions, and language might bear either
interpretation. One striking omission had marked her conduct when
I had referred to George's return. She had not inquired when I
expected him back. Was this indifference? Surely not. Surely
indifference would have led her to ask the conventionally civil
question which ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would have
addressed to me as a matter of course. Was she, on her side,
afraid to trust herself to speak of George at a time when an
unusual tenderness was aroused in her by the near prospect of
saying farewell? It might be--it might not be--it might be. My
feeble reason took the side of my inclination; and, after
vibrating between Yes and No, I stopped where I had begun--at
Yes.
She finished the letter in a few minutes, and dropped it into the
post-bag the moment it was done.
"Not a word more," she said, returning to me with a sigh of
relief--"not a word about my aunt or my going away till the time
comes. We have two more days; let us make the most of them."
Two more days! Eight-and-forty hours still to pass; sixty minutes
in each of those hours; and every minute long enough to bring
with it an event fatal to George's future! The bare thought kept
my mind in a fever. For the remainder of the day I was as
desultory and as restless as our Queen of Hearts herself. Owen
affectionately did his best to quiet me, but in vain. Even
Morgan, who whiled away the time by smoking incessantly, was
struck by the wretched spectacle of nervous anxiety that I
presented to him, and pitied me openly for being unable to
compose myself with a pipe. Wearily and uselessly the hours wore
on till the sun set. The clouds in the western heaven wore wild
and tortured shapes when I looked out at them; and, as the
gathering darkness fell on us, the fatal fearful wind rose once
more.
When we assembled at eight, the drawing of the lots had no longer
any interest or suspense, so far as I was concerned. I had read
my last story, and it now only remained for chance to decide the
question of precedency between Owen and Morgan. Of the two
numbers left in the bowl, the one drawn was Nine. This made it
Morgan's turn to read, and left it appropriately to Owen, as our
eldest brother, to close the proceedings on the next night.
Morgan looked round the table when he had spread out his
manuscript, and seemed half inclined to open fire, as usual, with
a little preliminary sarcasm; but his eyes met mine; he saw the
anxiety I was suffering; and his natural kindness, perversely as
he might strive to hide it, got the better of him. He looked down
on his paper; growled out briefly, "No need for a preface; my
little bit of writing explains itself; let's go on and have don e
with it," and so began to read without another word from himself
or from any of us.
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